“They never saw eye to eye,” said one former minister. “Simon has never hidden the fact that he is a strong Remainer and has always had a big problem with Brexit.”
A Whitehall insider said: “The Foreign Office was very irritable because of the tension between Simon and Boris.
“Simon took on a junior civil servant whom Boris was convinced had hired to spy on him, and Boris eventually sacked him because he believed he was actually an agent of Theresa May’s No 10 operation.
“Boris thought that Simon and others were constantly trying to undermine him by putting out stories about him being lazy and so on. It was a very difficult working environment because civil servants never forgave Boris for Brexit.
“So it seems a little bit like Simon has been waiting three years to get his revenge, and he’s finally had his chance, regardless of the fact that what he’s saying might be true.”
In March last year Lord Macdonald, 61, was interviewed by the UK In a Changing Europe think tank when he said he was one of three senior civil servants on Downing Street’s list who were “all for the high jump”. .
He said he was “one of those who got soaked” by former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings’ threat of “heavy rain” falling on Whitehall.
In September 2020, Lord Macdonald took early retirement after Mr Johnson made it clear he did not want him to stay on when the Foreign Office merged with DfID. Mr Johnson explained to him that it was a new department and that “you are the essence of the Foreign Office … you will always appear to them as the Foreign Office. I need a new person from the beginning”.
Mr Johnson softened the blow by giving Lord Macdonald a premiership rather than an automatic appointment for retired civil servants. But that hasn’t stopped him from criticizing the prime minister ever since.
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